Weimar Republic

Graf Zeppelin - A Brief History

One of the major achievements of the Weimar Republic was
the development of commercial aviation through its rigid airships. The
most famous of these airships was the Graf Zeppelin LZ-127,
"Count Zeppelin" in English, which would become the first successful
intercontinental commercial aircraft. The code LZ-127 stands for
Luftschiff Zeppelin #127.

The airship was named after Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin
(1838-1917), shown in a 1910 photograph at the left. Count Zeppelin
was a general in the army, later an aircraft manufacturer, and the
founder of the Zeppelin Airship Company.

In
1863, Count Zeppelin took leave from the army, to travel to the United
States, as an adviser to the Union Army. During his stay in America, he
made his first ascent in a balloon, at St. Paul, Minnesota. It was
this experience that was the incentive for his later experiments in
aeronautics. From the 1880's, and after his retirement from the
military in 1890, Count Zeppelin was completely preoccupied with the
idea of guidable balloons.

Count Zeppelin
eventually developed his rigid airship idea, as follows: a rigid
aluminum framework, covered in a fabric envelope; separate internal gas
cells, each being free to expand and contract; and a modular frame,
allowing for the addition of sections and gas cells, controls, engines,
and a gondola, all rigidly attached. In August 1895, Zeppelin received a
patent for his new rigid airship design, and on July 2, 1900, Zeppelin
made the first flight with the LZ-1 over Lake Constance, near
Friedrichshafen, in Southern Germany.

After
some initial failures, further successful flights sparked public
interest in the development of the airships, and through public
donations and lotteries, Count Zeppelin was able to raise millions of
Marks for his work. With the funds, he later founded the Zeppelin
Airship Company. Though originally developed for military use, by 1909,
the airships were being used for commercial flights as well. Between
1909 and 1914, these rigid airships had transported 37,250 passengers on
1,600 flights, without incident.

LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin leaving the hanger in Friedrichshavenfor its First Flight on September 18, 1928

The
airship LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin was the largest, most highly developed,
most luxurious airship of the Weimar Republic, when it was completed in
1928. It was somewhat of a high-speed, floating, luxury ocean-liner of its day.
Only the wealthy could afford passage on the Graf Zeppelin, especially
on international flights, but it was still symbolic of the golden days
of the Weimar Republic and of the Worldwide fascination with long
distance air travel.

As an example of
how the Graf Zeppelin caught the imagination of the World, many
countries issued commemorative airmail postage stamps publicizing its
flights, and flown covers carried on all the airships were widely
collected, despite the hard financial times of the Great Depression.

United States Airmail Stamp issued in 1930

Being
the pride of the Weimar Republic, the airship Graf Zeppelin had a total
length of 776 ft. and a total volume of 3,700,000 cubic ft. It was
powered by five 550 horsepower engines that could burn either "Blau" gas
or gasoline. Blau gas was an artificial fuel, similar to propane,
invented by Dr. Hermann Blau. The airship had a maximum speed of 80
miles per hour or 70 knots, and a total maximum thrust of 2,650
horsepower. At maximum capacity, the fuel tank provided 67 hours of
cruising. Using both gasoline and "Blau" gas could give it a total of
118 hours of cruising.

From its first flight in September 1928 until its last
flight in June 1937, the airship Graf Zeppelin saw nearly nine years of
uninterrupted service, totaling nearly two years in the air, and it
traveled over a million miles. Of its 590 flights, 144 of them were
ocean crossings, which carried a total of 13,110 passengers, with a
perfect safety record.

The seventh
flight of the Graf Zeppelin was its first Atlantic crossing.
Thereafter, it made regularly scheduled flights across the South
Atlantic to Brazil, one round-the-world tour, a polar expedition, two
round trips to the Middle East, and a few tours within Europe. A German
3 Mark coin of the Weimar Republic, commemorating the 1929
round-the-world flight of the airship, is shown at the upper left.

The Commander of the airship LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, on its
first trans-Atlantic flight in 1928, was Dr. Hugo Eckener. The airship
left Friedrichshaven on the morning of October 11, 1928 and arrived at
Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey on October 15, after the 111
hour flight. In a testimonial to the Weimar Republic and to the
marvelous airship, a ticker tape parade was given through downtown New
York for the crew and they were also invited to visit the White House.

This
was not Eckener's first oceanic crossing though. Four years earlier,
in October 1924, he had delivered the Graf Zeppelin's sister ship, the
LZ-126 to its buyer, the U.S. Navy. The LZ-126 was later renamed to the
U.S.S. Los Angeles.

By the mid-1930's
though, regular passenger airplanes had become capable of trans-oceanic
travel. They could carry more passengers and were much cheaper. With
the airship Hindenburg disaster in 1937, the public's confidence in the
hydrogen filled airships was irreparably damaged, and all commercial
airship service ended. About a month after the Hindenburg disaster, the
LZ-127 was turned into a museum. With the outbreak of World War II, in
March 1940, Hermann Göring ordered that the airship be dismantled, and
that its parts be recycled for the war effort.

eBay Auction and Store LinksWeimar Republic

The following links feature category-focused affiliated seller listings on various eBay sites worldwide. They may enable visitors to shop
for and to buy specific items for the
particular collecting subject they've just read about.

The
affiliated eBay seller auction lots provided by eBay,
Inc. are not the responsibility of the management of this
website. On high priced material, make sure the lots you are buying are properly authenticated.

Remember
that the lots on European eBay sites are priced in EUROS. Shipping
charges may be more, and the lots may take longer to arrive. Also, make
sure the foreign seller ships to your country, before bidding on or
buying his lot.